Are you the type of manager who likes to improve? Optimize what it does? Progress? Assess your leadership skills with the Wheel of Leadership diagnostic tool. It’s a tool that I developed that allows you to get an overview of your role as a leader at a given point in time. This tool combines the different dimensions and leadership skills of the Unique coaching philosophy.
Doing the Leadership Wheel exercise provides a clear view of what’s happening in the six different areas of your leadership by organizing and evaluating them. Thus, the wheel represents the state of affairs at a given time.
Following this inventory, you can easily place your energy where it is important to you and thus increase your positive impact significantly.
Here are the explanations and instructions to make your own diagnosis. Let me know what you think in the comments 😊
Do you prefer video to text? Watch the video recap of the article below 😉
This is Unique coaching’s Wheel of Leadership.
The six areas of the Wheel of Leadership
WARNING
Some of the questions below are “big” questions. It’s quite normal not to be able to answer everything! Just keep in mind that in all areas related to leadership, the depth to which you can go is infinite! It’s more about how satisfied you are with yourself at this time and not where you are in your journey. This is an important nuance!
The Three Dimensions of Leadership
My person
This is about how you manage YOURSELF. That is to say: the way you manage your emotions, your energy, your stress. How much do you maintain a positive impact on yourself and others during times of stress or emotional stress? How do you rate your self-knowledge? What are your values, your strengths, your interests, your ambitions? What do you do to achieve your goals in life?
My Relationships
The sphere concerning others includes the following dimensions of communication: making oneself understood, listening, curiosity through questioning, validating (rather than making up scenarios), having the courage to say what is, having the necessary difficult conversations and managing conflicts. In addition, there is benevolence and empathy.
My goals
Here it is a question of being able to have a vision, to establish clear objectives, and to make them happen. In addition, it is about being open to new ideas, thinking outside the box in order to achieve your goals, motivating your team to achieve them (and to motivate yourself!). Then, recognize performance, know how to give feedback that is both positive and readjusting, at the right frequency! (Not once a year during the annual 😉 evaluation.)
The three families of leadership competencies
Leadership
As a leader, how well do you know how to engage each person on your team? Mobilize your group? Does your team have a common, shared goal? Does everyone understand what their impact is on others? Do they really work as a team or do you stay in the center of everything and be the person who coordinates everything that needs to be coordinated? To what extent do you delegate clearly and with positive results?
Management
Management skills are key in a leadership role! You have to know how to manage both the human side and the more technical part of management! It seems that “management” is unpopular in our time, but it is necessary! A good leader knows how to follow up at the right time, coordinate, schedule, manage a budget and apply good practices in change management on a daily basis.
Agility
Agility is a leadership skill related to your ability to make decisions and take actions with full knowledge of the impacts and consequences of these on you, others and the organization (these are the three dimensions of leadership!). For example, are you more reactive or are your actions and decisions, quick or not, taken as best you can by having the general overview?
Between reacting and acting, there is a whole world… accessible.
The reaction is an instinctive response, agility includes a step back, even 2 nanoseconds 😊 Also, how deep do you go to transform them? That is to say, rather at the source versus on the surface? Rather on the need than the symptom? Also, with whom do you cooperate in your organization, or outside your organization even if it does not give you anything, strictly speaking, concretely in the short term. Then, to what extent do you go outside the box when it’s relevant?
Making Your Leadership Wheel
Instructions
- Draw the wheel as in the summary image (appearing a little above). That is to say, a circle, with six parts and a scale from 0 to 10 inside. Then list the domains (the 3 dimensions and the 3 families of leadership competencies).
- Then, for each area, indicate your current level of satisfaction with a cross. 0 means you’re not at all satisfied and 10 means you’re extremely satisfied.
Write down the reasons for your rating if you wish, it can be very useful when you do your wheel again! You will be able to see what has evolved.
3. Connect the dots together to form a “spider web.” It is then possible to visualize the satisfaction you feel for each of the six areas and also for each particular area.
4. Take a moment to analyze your wheel and choose one of the six areas that you want to work on.
The item you choose should be the one that will make the biggest difference to you.
As you know, observations are good, but to observe transformations there is only action 😊
So I invite you to answer the following 3 questions:
#1: If you had a significant improvement in the selected area. What new results would you see in this area?
For example: in my management I would notice that I would no longer be chased in files because of my delay, I would proactively return my deliverables at the right time!
#2: What does this result mean to you?
For example: peace of mind and better relationships with colleagues
#3: What are the 3 actions you could take in order to get what you just wrote in question 2?
Like what:
- First I have to take a moment to organize my week so I’m going to set aside 1 hour every Monday morning to take stock and organize my schedule.
- Then, I’m going to make sure I understand the expectations and the deadlines. For each file, I will ask these questions. Right away, I’m going to create a list of folders where this information isn’t clear and I’m contacting the people.
- Finally, I think that if I made work plans for myself, I would be less surprised by the magnitude of the task. Tomorrow morning I have 2 hours free and I’m going to analyze a little bit where I am in order to “update”.
Of all the plans you make, make sure you have milestones, deadlines and plan for them!
To move forward on your plan, ask for help, get trained!
In conclusion
Perform this leadership wheel exercise frequently. Don’t hesitate to set quarterly reminders for yourself to see your progress… or not! It’s never too late to take action.
Leadership is a lifelong process!